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Not a terribly original episode (it's basically Discovery does Voyager's "Shattered"), but I enjoyed it nonetheless.
Of course, I'll admit that I'm biased in this case, as the bug that Moll planted on Adira last episode turns out to be a Krenim chronophage (aka "time bug"). I'm pretty sure this is the first time the Krenim have been mentioned in canon since Voyager's "Infinite Regress", and Rayner seems to confirm that the Krenim were involved in the Temporal Wars.
Lots of deep cuts in this episode. Stamets' immunity to temporal shenanigans from Season 1's "Magic to Make the Sanest Man Go Mad" is a major plot point. I also love Stamets acknowledging he was a lot grumpier before the tardigrade DNA.
Season 1 Burnham vs. Season 5 Burnham fight was fun. Season 1 Burnham was likewise way grumpier.
Airiam!
-------------------- "Kirito? I killed a thing and now it says I have XPs! Is that bad? Am I dying?"
-Asuna, Episode 2, Sword Art Online Abridged
Registered: Mar 1999
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So there's a jump 30 years into the future where the Breen got their hands on the Progenitors' technology. I have two questions about that scene:
1. Zora opens the main viewscreen to show us the remains of Starfleet HQ. Burnham asks "What kind of ship is that?" to which Zora answers "Breen". What ship? I did't see anything other than Starfleet HQ's debris. I'm now curious what a 32nd Century Breen ship looks like.
2. Was this scene supposed to be referencing "Calypso"? If so, I have questions. Like, lots of questions.
-------------------- "Kirito? I killed a thing and now it says I have XPs! Is that bad? Am I dying?"
-Asuna, Episode 2, Sword Art Online Abridged
Registered: Mar 1999
| IP: Logged
posted
It initially looked like it was going to be a visit to the Calypso period, but obviously not. Discovery’s surroundings and configuration were very different in that Short Trek.
OK… thinking aloud here. Say that this particular brand of time travel is a bit like in Avengers: Endgame. Each period they visited was therefore the start of a new timeline, even if they all still mostly proceeded in roughly the same way as the “prime” timeline. Crucially, they don’t all collapse once Burnham & Rainer leave. Much in the way that an earlier Loki was able to escape the events in New York before getting scooped up by the TVA.
I won’t get into the possible implications of any microchanges that were made in each timeline. Like, I dunno, a forewarned Airiam not being taken over by Control..?
Nope, let’s focus on that scene 30 years in the future. Discovery is intact, but damaged; the crew are dead; the Federation is gone, destroyed by the Breen using Progenitor tech. Zora is still operating. Perhaps… B&R’s visit gives her renewed purpose. She repairs and then moves and hides the ship… wherever. Then, or sometime after, she also restores it to the original config.
A thousand years passes. The Federation are a distant memory, their very name fading, now the V’draysh, when Craft visits.
So why does Zora tell him she can’t move the ship because the captain ordered her not to? As if almost implying she’s waiting for the crew to return? Lying? Delusional? Or did she deliberately alter her own memories to create a more bearable reality? I dunno. I can’t explain everything! But this is at least a plausible chain of events which permits “Calypso” to remain canon…
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Refreshing my memory, it appears that the V’draysh were still a going concern in Craft’s time. But, given he seemed a decent sort, and yet antagonistic towards whoever they are, whatever the V’draysh are in his time may be nothing like what the Federation was. However that doesn’t alter my premise, I don’t think.
[Of course one person, who spoke in a pidgin dialect, post-Burn also mentioned the V’draysh - but I really don’t see any way, based on what we know NOW, to reconcile “Calypso” as taking place anytime between the 2250s and the 3180s]